An impressive free-to-play real time strategy game

The pedigree of DomiNations is impressive. Developed by Big Huge Games whose developers worked on Rise of Nations, the company brings its experience to its first mobile real time strategy game.

Play through history from the early days of civilization up to the Industrial Age. The game will go up to The Space Age but will be added in a later update.

All the core gameplay mechanics

Bringing all the standard gameplay mechanics from a PC game to mobile is difficult. DomiNations succeeds in simplifying resource management into smaller tasks while keeping the challenges of expanding your city.

You have two currencies to deal with. Gold is used to build and upgrade buildings. Food is used to train soldiers and upgrade your troops. You need to continuously mine and farm to keep a healthy bank to expand. There’s also Crowns, DomiNations’ premium currency. Rather than require Crowns to buy premium items, they are used to speed up building or training. They can also be used to buy missing resources for upgrades.

In the single player campaign, your goal is to build your civilization and journey through each age from Stone to Industrial. You can also conquer different civilizations by battling against the game-controlled non-playable civilizations.

The multiplayer is a player-versus-player attack mode. You send your army against another player’s city and try to conquer it. Depending on the strength of their city, you may be wiped out entirely.

You can also create alliances with other players to create huge armies that can fight another alliances.

DomiNations is a fun and addictive game showcasing how well Big Huge Games translated the key features to mobile.

Don’t pay anything

If you’re familiar with real time strategy games, DomiNations will be easy to play. Even though city management is simplified, you still have to have a keen eye about the different routes you take in expanding. Do you create more markets for trade? Or spend all your money upgrading your army? The choices are all up to you. DomiNations doesn’t require you to play in any specific style.

The graphics aren’t the most detailed, but they give DomiNations’ its own character. A three-forth top-down camera shows off most of the map and it’s easy to recognize each building and character.

City building at higher levels takes more time to complete so you will have to put the game down and come back later. Combat is a lot of fun. You place your army at different points outside a city and let them attack. If you want them to attack a specific building, you can command them. There’s a cooldown after issuing commands. Each soldier is set in a rock-paper-scissors mechanic. Standard warriors are well-rounded. Archers are great against infantry at a distance, but have low health. You really have to strategize well or your entire army can get destroyed before even entering a city.

After playing a lot of free-to-play games, DomiNations is one of the only that doesn’t force you to buy or use premium currency to complete tasks. You actually never have to use Crowns if you don’t want to. The way Big Huge Games designed the monetization in DomiNations is better than the majority of other free-to-play strategy games.

Play it if you like strategy games

If you like strategy games, DomiNations is a must play. You get to build and control the evolution of your civilization. It’s a simplified PC experience that’s perfect for mobile. There are still more updates coming which will add a lot of new content to play in the future.