MischiefMaker: Meanwhile, I learned that Shrapnel Games has started selling Dominions 3, the other contender for Master of Magic's throne, as a digital download. I would be willing to put up with the inferior graphics of Dominions 3 if the gameplay were better.

MischiefMaker: The key thing is, I would be playing Singleplayer only. Can anyone give some insight on which is the stronger singleplayer game? Especially someone who's tried Dominions recently patched?

grove12345: i tried both. In SM i loved the combat. To me SM is like a sequel to Master of Magic. Yup i said it.

MischiefMaker: After futzing with the demos for a week, I ended up getting Dominions 3. For 2 reasons:

1. Age of Wonders plays more like Age of Mild Curiosities in comparison. Insane unit upkeep keeps army size low, tiny amount of casting points keeps your mighty spells to a minimum, too much of combat success is in the hands of the random number generator.

Dominions 3, in comparison, has me fielding armies in the hundreds, I can have packs of wizards lobbing fireball after fireball into the enemy ranks, like every AD&D nerd's fantasies come to life, and while you don't have direct control of combat, the results pretty much always make sense as opposed to AoW2's "Wow, bad luck. Your tier-3 super-badass was murdered by those extra-lucky tier-0s. At least it's not a battleship getting sunk by a stoneage archer."

2. Because Dominons 3 is available RIGHT NOW. Meanwhile gog has had the game and the license for weeks but for some retarded reason is STILL delaying release while Impulse customers have been enjoying the full trilogy for weeks. Maybe before the PR stunt I would have waited patiently, but my days as a gog fanboy are over.