Orcs, goblins and humans?

[Faenaris]

Hiya all,

I watched the site of Shrapnelgames yesterday and my eye fell on Dominions 3. While I knew next to nothing about the game, after some reading, drooling at screenshots and reading a few reviews, I have decided to buy the game. I'm a sucker for BIG manuals.

Anyhow, while I'm waiting for the game to arrive (which won't be for another 2 weeks, I reckon), I have a small question:

I'm a big fan of Warhammer and as such, I'm a sucker for battles involving your run-of-the-mill humans and orks. And I was wondering: does Dominions 3 have a "human" race and an "ork" race? If there are, are they present in all 3 ages? Or more of a EA thing?

[Endoperez]

There are well over dozen races with nothing but humans. Then there must be about as many nations with majority of the forces being humans, but with giants or bakemono (goblins) or Vanir (small gods) or Abysians (fire-people).


There isn't any race called orcs, but there are some races that are ugly, stupid, strong and not much else: EA Yomi (demons ruling goblins) and MA Shinuyama (bakemono-goblins and bigger Dai Bakemono), the four monkey races have troops varying from stupid and small monkeys to big, strong and stupid monkeys, and MA Jotunheim with its giants and vaettir-goblins. There might be few other nations that you might recognize as "orcs" too.

Nations are a bit different in Dominions. Middle-Age Ulm is a nation of strong, tought people weak to magic, expert metalworkers who neglect everything but their precious metals, masters of steel and armor and heavy weapons who are pretty often defeated by the suberb magic of their enemies. Their Master Smiths are their only mages, and they are good at crafting magic items. In many other games, they would be called dwarves. They are just a stocky breed of humans in Dominions.
There are dwarfs in Dominions, but their role is just to support Vanir, the small gods of Vanheim. Vanir are the closest thing Dominions has to elves, at the moment: tall, beautiful, masters of magic, and utterly annihilate human armies.

Many nations of Dominions are based on the myths from which the more recent fantasy trends have been born. Some nations are purely fantasy, but many are based on different myths of different nations mostly from Europe, and to lesser excent from Asia or Africa.


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edited a lot

[Migaaresno]

Dominions got human races, yes. Most of the races are humans, or consist mostly of humans. There is no ork, orcs or somthing whit that name. But there are plenty of big, huge strong beings, like jotumhein the giant race.

The farrest you can get to anything reassembling a ork from warhammer is to summen a troll and cast mossbody over it to give it a green skin.

And about big battles, most of them involves from about 100 to 300 units on the battlefield. I never tested what the limet was, buts its possible to have 1600 units on the battlefield and maby even more.

[Meglobob]

Dominions has its own 'unique' flavour as far as races is concerned, this originality is one of the things I like. You have Middle Age (MA) Man, Late Age (LA) Man if you like playing the human race (good, fun, powerful nations to play), there are also many, many more human dominated races.

I do not think traditional orcs and goblins exist in Dom3 but I could be wrong. You DO have however dozens of strange wonderful races that you will slowly fall in love with over time. Hoburgs (kinda halflings), giants, agarthans (underground lizard/giant race), abysians (fire race), amazons, demons, devils and even a alien race from another world, the R'lyeh. Plus many, many others...

Is there a traditional Orc/goblin race out of the 60+ by the way anyone? Just for old times sake it may be fun to play them...

[Faenaris]

Many thanks for the extensive replies, Endoperez, Migaaresno and Meglobob. I'm looking forward to playing Dominions 3 even more now.

Now, I don't mind the absence of a true "ork" race. Having lots of 'umies, some kick-*** monkeys and some though elvish-like folk seems like a truly interesting mix!

Oh and demons ... Excellent, time to get nasty.

See you all in multiplayer once I have received my copy, read the manual and dipped my feet in the single-player portion.

Ermor (Ashen Empire)is an Undead nation pretty much the way it was originally in WFB3, before the split between Vampire Counts & Khemry.

The game is easily modable.

Back in Dom2 there were mods for 2 orc empires, forest elves & dwarves...not sure if those have been converted to Dom3, but it should not be too difficult.

With some patience you might be able to create a mod yourself that mirrors any nation from Warhammer.

[Jack_Trowell]

With some patience you might be able to create a mod yourself that mirrors any nation from Warhammer.

There are already several such mods/projects in the mod forum (including, last time I checked, 2 elven nations - warning: the blood elves are not supposed to be balanced)

[Wish]

in Dom 2, in addition to the Norse elves (vanir) there where a more Gaelic elf, in the nation of "man," the sidhe.

that aspect of man is not yet in the game, I believe, but is supposed to be added in an update at a later time.

Frankly, every other fantasy game ever made has the human vs orc conflict. It's often referred to as "vanilla fantasy" and I personally am very much burnt out on it. Thats why I am glad Dom 3, and its predecessors, go out of their way to be more imaginative.

[PrinzMegaherz]

For me, the biger Bakemono just look like orcs in samurai armor

[PDF]

PrinzMegaherz said:
For me, the biger Bakemono just look like orcs in samurai armor

Uruk-hais !

Wish_for_Blood_Slaves,
Sidhe will be back in the next patch I suppose, already most units are in the game (near id 1650, mixed with Lanka)