What you do in a game of Dominions 6

You play a pretender: a would-be god who means to be the only one. You do not fight or build anything yourself. You have a nation to do that for you, with its armies, mages and priests, and a map of provinces held by the independents and by other pretenders who want the same thing you do.

A turn

A game is a series of turns, and one turn is one month of game time. In each one you look over your provinces, spend gold on troops and commanders, send armies into neighbouring provinces, set your mages to research or to forge, and have your priests preach. Then you end the turn. Nothing happens until every player has done the same: all the orders are carried out together, battles included, and the next turn opens with a list of messages about what went well and what did not.

Dominion

Your god’s influence on the world is its dominion. It spreads from your pretender, your capital, your temples and a prophet if you name one, and a province under your dominion slowly takes on the preferences you gave your god, the scales, such as order or turmoil and heat or cold. If your god has no dominion left anywhere on the map, you are out of the game. Step two explains how to design a god, and the dominion of a god is one of the things you buy.

How you win

The usual way to win is to hold enough Thrones of Ascension, special provinces scattered across the map; the game settings say how many ascension points are needed. A game can instead be set up so that the last pretender standing wins, which the settings call Conquer all. Step five covers both.

The order the game asks you things

Before turn one you meet a short run of screens. The manual lists them in this order, and the steps of this guide take them in the order that is easiest to understand, not the order of the screens.

1. The map. Pick a ready-made map or have one made, and choose its size. Step five has the choices.
2. The age. Early, Middle or Late, which decides which nations you can play. Step four explains them.
3. The players. Your nation, and the computer opponents with theirs. Step four again, and step five for the opponents.
4. Your pretender. The design screen. Step two.
5. The game settings. The rules of this particular world, and the throne and Cataclysm choices on the Thrones tab. Step five.

Then the first turn opens. The same step five walks through it, and step three explains the battles you will not be steering.

Words you will meet

None of this needs to make sense yet. Every game term in these steps is a glossary term: hover it, or press it on a phone, to read a short definition, with a link to the page that explains it in full. The list at the end of each step gathers the terms used on that page. When you want the rules under a term, the mechanics pages and the glossary are where they live, and the longer strategy article shows how the choices stack up.

The next five steps take one piece at a time: your god, battles, your nation, a first game, and what to do when you are lost.