What is Dominions II?

[Arryn]

I'd hate to compare Dom to Hoi (or any of Paradox's EU-engined games). IW has coded a by far better AI than the lame excuse for AI that EU/HoI/Vicky have.

The provincial aspects / world conquest do vaguely resemble Risk, but that's about as far as that analogy can go, and it's pushing it as is. You have a broader and deeper variety of units than the Warlords or AoW series, but lack the depth of hero development of those games. OTOH, Dom allows you to go into more detail in equipping your "heroes" (commanders), so it's a different sort of "development", and more or less balances out not having a real system for user-selected hero skills and their improvement. Pretenders are somewhat similar to your mage in MoM, but the feel is different. Dominion push (vaguely) resembles something from Populous.